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Confession: In an earlier life, I used to write a weekly cooking column. This was the fun part of my job, since I actually like to cook. However, at times there are just too many other things going on in your life. Like looming deadlines.

These are recipes for the harried author (or anyone else) whose family insists on eating dinner when she doesn’t have time to cook and nobody can face another slice of pizza.

If you come across a portrait or photograph of the famous archaeologist, author and politician Austen Henry Layard, it is most often of him as an old gentleman with an enormous white beard. That beard is so big and white that he seems to be all beard and no person. But long before that he was a young man working in an office and longing for something—anything—more exciting.

George Stephenson was an English engineer who has been called “The Father of the Railways” of the 19th century. He was a brilliant and visionary man, but success wasn’t easy for him.The scientific establishment of his day had difficulty believeing that anything good or important could come from a man who wasn't a "gentleman" and who didn't have the benefit of a univeristy education.

All is prepared for the execution. The blade of the guillotine has been sharpened, or the hangman’s noose is ready, or firing squad awaits, and then, at the last minute, it is discovered that the prisoner has escaped!

In the early 19th century there were four Tree sisters, all of whom went on the stage. (If there were three of them, one could probably create a nice tongue twister, but there were four.) Ellen Tree, who married the noted actor Charles Kean, was the only one who remained in the theater, performing with her husband as Mrs. Charles Kean until his death.

Thank you for dropping by. I hope that last week you met Linda Ford's lonely cowboy hero, Blue Lyons. If you missed him, you can catch up at http://lindaford.org/blog/?p=2983. He will be appearing in one of Linda's Love Inspired historicals. And special thanks to Debora Dale (http://www.deboradale.com/) who organized this blog tour.

A Dickensian childhood. The phrase conjures up images of small children working in coal mines or cotton mills, ragged urchins huddled in a doorway, Oliver Twist asking for more gruel. But you didn’t have to be poor to have a Dickensian childhood. Consider Augustus Hare.